La Grande Sauterelle got up and went for a walk. They were camping in a park that belonged to the town of Douglas. It was the first time they had used a municipal park; there were no showers, but the park was huge, with plenty of greenery, and admission was free.

Jack took advantage of the calm to make coffee and read a chapter of The Oregon Trail Revisited. He paid special attention to the emigrants’ diaries. Little by little, he had come to think of these people as old friends, and now he knew the nature and habits of each one; his favourites were young Jesse Applegate, the painter Alfred Jacob Miller, brave Narcissa Whitman, the dilettante Francis Parkman and his guide Henri Chatillon, old Ezra Meeker and the poet William Kelly.

When the girl came back from her walk she sat across the table from him and he looked at her face: hair black as coal, slightly slanted eyes of the same colour, prominent cheekbones that accentuated the thinness of her cheeks. He saw a fleeting shadow cross her thin, moving, beautiful face.

Shutting his book, he told the girl to go ahead if she had something to say. She began to talk about Wounded Knee.

“In December 1890,” she said, “Sitting Bull has been assassinated and the Sioux have given up armed struggle. They are led to the edge of a stream called Wounded Knee, where they set up camp for the night. Soldiers surround the Indians to keep watch over them; they are men of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment. In the morning they decide to disarm the Indians. They have unlimbered four machine guns to suppress any resistance. Suddenly a brawl breaks out, and an Indian fires a shot. In a flash the soldiers unload their rifles on the Sioux warriors. Then the four machine guns send a shower of bullets into the women and children. There are a hundred and eighty dead in all. It is December 29, 1890. On New Year’s Day 1891, grave diggers come to Wounded Knee and dig a mass grave for the bodies that are still lying on the snow; they find four babies who are still breathing, wrapped in their mothers’ shawls. This is the end of the Indian wars. After the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Indians stop waging war against the United States Army. And that’s it.”

Darkness had swept into the municipal park.

Jack waited a few minutes; he wanted to be sure that she was finished and that the storm had passed. Then he lit a lamp and poured a cup of coffee, which he set on the table in front of the girl, with the sugar bowl and the pint of milk.

“Thank you,” she said. “Is it late?”

“Not really,” he said.

She sipped her coffee.